Lisztomania: Before the Beatles or Michael Jackson there was Franz Liszt History's First King of Pop

 “Lisztomania, a condition in which swooning female fans collected his cigar butts to secrete in their cleavages.”

-from the New York Times, January 14, 2001

Famed 19th century German lyric poet Heinrich Heine, known for his radical political views and satirical verse that was often set to music, coined the term “Lisztomania” to describe the phenomena that he witnessed in concert halls across Europe during the 1840’s.

Lisztomania, or “Liszt Fever” as it came to be called in the English speaking world was a phrase that quickly caught on  among members of the mid-nineteenth century press and public to describe the frenzied adoration, fanaticism, and hero-worship that surrounded the young good looking composer and piano virtuoso Franz Liszt on his yearly concert tours across continental Europe between 1839 and 1847.

Young women would creep up behind the young pianist and try to snip off lockets of his hair.

Admiring fans would pour the backwash of his coffee cups into glass jars and save them forever as keepsakes.  

After one of Liszt’s concerts in Berlin during 1841 it was reported that, “Liszt threw away a cigar stump in the street under the watchful eyes of an infatuated lady who reverently picked the offensive weed up out of the gutter and had it encased in diamonds.” (quoted from Franz Liszt the Virtuoso Years by Alan Walker)

Franz List was history’s first pop star over one-hundred years before Elvis Presley ever shook his hips on stage or before The Beatles took America by storm with their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.  

Franz Liszt at the Height of Liszt Fever

The Hungarian born musician in the classical tradition with the flowing locks of auburn colored hair, boyish charm and irresistible sex-appeal to women (both young and old!) was truly the King of Pop in mid-nineteenth century Europe at a time when true kings by birth, and not by musical talent or good looks, still ruled over most of the western world.

But truth be told, at the peak of his musical talents, Franz Liszt was more well known, and loved, than any European monarch.

During an eight year period in the 1840’s Liszt gave around one-thousand piano recitals across Europe--a truly remarkable total!  Not only was the pace of Liszt’s musical touring frenzied but the adoration, reaction and fandom that his appearances generated was nothing short of unprecedented and unheard of in history up to that time.

Music historian and author Oliver Hilmes, an authority on the subject of “Lisztomania” who wrote a book entitled Franz Liszt: Musician, Celebrity, Superstar published in 2016 stated of Liszt’s public performances during the 1840’s that, “{T}here were times when the enthusiasm triggered by his public appearances bordered on delirium, and he became a figure on whom contemporaries projected all manner of erotic fantasies and desires.”

Though primarily known and remembered today  for his unparalleled genius as a composer and for his skill as a piano virtuoso, Franz Liszt’s remarkable good looks undoubtedly played a central role in generating “Liszt Fever” and in making the Hungarian born musician 19th century Europe’s King of Pop.

Hilmes, in his seminal work on the subject remarked that, “There were women who forgot everything, including their family’s good name, to be close to their God.”

First Photograph of Liszt circa 1840

Liszt was born to Adam and Anna Liszt in October of 1811.  His father Adam played the piano, violin and the guitar and was a talented composer in his own right.  The elder Liszt was a friend and acquaintance to such musical luminaries as Joseph Hayden and Ludwig van Beethoven.  In later life, Liszt himself would credit both his father’s influence, and his frequent attendance at Mass as a child and adolescent (Liszt early in life was a devout Catholic) for helping to inspire and create the musical genius that he originally began to display from such an early age.

He published his first known musical composition called Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli in either 1822 or 1823 (the exact date is lost to history) at the tender young age of only 11!

During his adolescence as the renown of the young musical prodigy Franz Liszt continued to grow, the young composer and piano virtuoso’s world was shaken to its core by the untimely passing of his father.  In 1827 Adam Liszt died a slow and painful death from typhoid fever, contracted quite possibly in either Italy or the south of France, while he was on a musical tour with his son.  Watching his father die right before his eyes greatly traumatized the teenage Franz, who after the death of Adam, retreated into the love and protective nature of his mother Anna (nee’ Lager) Liszt.

Composer Adam Liszt

Anna and the teenage Franz moved to a small apartment in Paris where both taught music to help make ends meet.  Anna Liszt was well known in aristocratic European circles for her good looks, which her musically gifted son Franz obviously inherited, and always seemed to use to his utmost advantage around all of the ladies.

It was during the 1830’s, while living with his attractive mother as a music tutor, that Franz’ career as both a composer and a pianist really took off.  After attending a concert hosted by the famed Italian violinist Niccolo Paginini to raise money for the victims of the Paris cholera epidemic of 1832, Liszt’s career got the boost it needed when he befriended the famous Italian musician and composer and pledged himself to go on tour and become the world’s most accomplished piano virtuoso.  Though some time did pass after Liszt made this decision once he fell in love with a woman that many considered to be way out of his league so to speak.

Franz Liszt began his frenetic concert tour of Europe in the year of 1839, and it continued unabated for eight years until 1847, with Liszt conducting over 1000 live concerts in that time-span for an average of more than one live musical performance every four days.

Liszt's Mother Anna

Some said, at the time, that Liszt went on this frenzied schedule of touring in an attempt to get over the heartbreak of the  failing relationship that he had with the aristocratic and beautiful Countess Marie d’Agoult.  Countess d’Agoult had left her marriage to her wealthy husband, and her two children, to go and live out of wedlock in 1835 with the young Franz Liszt in what at the time was considered to be a scandalous affair between the Countess, a member of the lower order of the French nobility, and Franz Liszt, who was nothing more than a musically talented Hungarian-born commoner.

For two years, though the Countess d’Agoult never formally divorced or even separated from her husband, the couple lived together and Liszt had three children, a son and two daughters while still in his late twenties with the Countess d’Agoult, though the couple would never formally marry and by 1844 they would permanently separate. 

Beginning in the 1840’s relations between Liszt and his lover the Countess d’Agoult began to sour and by the age of thirty Franz threw himself into his career as both a composer and as a concert pianist and the phenomena that the world would grow to know as ‘Lisztomania’ or ‘Liszt Fever’ was born out of the young virtuoso’s heartbreak and desire to become a star.

Countess Marie d'Agoult the Love of Liszt's Life

Music journalist, violinist and Syracuse University Professor Emerita Johanna Keller in her 2001 article entitled “In Search of a Liszt to be Loved” published in the New York Times on January 14, 2001 wrote of Franz Liszt, “Here’s the man: a strutting, manipulative rockstar for the Romantics, with a sexual magnetism that set off what the poet Heinrich Heine dubbed Lisztomania, a condition in which swooning female fans collected his cigar butts to secrete in their cleavages.”

In all of my research I have read perhaps, no better a summation of the historical phenomena known as “Lisztomania” or “Liszt Fever” than this one single sentence in this article by Ms. Keller.

But when we think of Franz Liszt today it is important to remember that he wasn’t all about just good looks and sex appeal.  Though, Franz Liszt and his open lifestyle with the Countess d’Agoult, and their love affair, may have been the fantasy of many an adoring female fan in the mid-nineteenth century, Franz Liszt was truly a musical genius like no other and does rightly deserve the title of history’s first true pop star.

In her article, even Johanna Keller who honestly admits that she herself had always had somewhat of a negative view of Liszt as more style over substance due to his historical reputation, goes on to point out that, “Among Liszt’s innovations were the invention of the modern piano recital…he was the first to play from memory and to perform consistently with the open lid of the piano reflecting sound into the auditorium.  He was the first to assay the entire keyboard repertoire which then ranged from Bach to Chopin…”

This means, before anyone else EVER in the history of music, before audiences numbering in the thousands, that Franz Liszt was willing and able to play absolutely anything, by anyone, at the mere drop of a hat from memory.  

Though he quite possibly could have slept with more women than anyone else in the modern history of Europe, it appears as if after fathering three children with the Countess d’Agoult that Franz Liszt remained rather chaste for the rest of his life and instead gave himself fully into his music and to raising his children.  He was known later in life for his generosity and philanthropy and as a teacher and professor of music studies it was said that Liszt considered all of his students to be his children.

During the 1840’s “Liszt Fever” may have gone to the head of many a swooning young maiden but it would appear as if, for all of his progressive and forward political thinking and beliefs, that Franz Liszt never lost his head during all of the frenzied adoration that he himself generated among his legions of adoring fans. 

Statue of Franz Liszt Playing Piano in Budapest

Today, many musicians and composers consider Liszt to be the greatest pianist who ever lived.  He died on July 31, 1886 at the age of seventy-four after having contracted pneumonia at the Bayreuth Music Festival in Bayreuth, Germany which was hosted by his youngest daughter.

His death was mourned by millions worldwide.  As twentieth century American Opera and Classical Music critic Peter G. Davis has pointed out, “Perhaps Liszt was not the most transcendent piano virtuoso who ever lived, but his audiences thought that he was.” (New York Magazine p. 75 January 3, 2021)